Understanding Your Brand Message and Local Marketing Strategy

Branding goes way beyond a tagline and a logo.

The most important component is cultivating a strong brand message that resonates with your target audience. If you hop right into marketing tactics, you’re missing more than half of the equation. Start with research, hone your message, develop a plan and then implement strategies.  This process will set you up for success.

Conduct Local Market Research

When creating a marketing strategy, the first step is always to get an understanding of what it is that your target market actually wants. If you don’t, you may miss the mark completely and your marketing efforts will fall on deaf ears.

For local marketing, you also have to consider the location of your audience. So, answer the following questions:

• How large of a geographical area do you serve?
• If you have a brick-and-mortar office, how far are people willing to physically travel to get your services?
• How large is your local market?
• How many competitors do you have? What are their unique selling points?

Answering these questions will lay the foundation for your market research. Starting too broad will be a waste of your time, and you will spend energy focusing on people and competitors that aren’t relevant to your business.

Creating a Profile of Your Ideal Client

Understanding your audience is the best way to create a branding strategy that resonates with them.

To do this, create an “Ideal Client” profile to figure out who they are, what they want, what they need, and where they are searching for services like yours.

• What are their top three pain points?
• What solutions have they tried already?
• What did they like about those solutions? What did they dislike?
• How old are they?
• What is their income level?
• What values are they looking for in the business they work with?
• What online platforms do they spend the most time on?
• Where do they go to find brands like yours? (i.e., Google, social media, referrals)

This information will help you determine:

• What unique selling point (USP) should be used to make your brand stand out.
• What services you should offer that your audience will be most interested in.
• What tone to use in your marketing and website content.
• What platforms you should market on.

Once you have your market research, it’s time to master your brand messaging and engage on the right platforms in order to get in front of your audience.

Master Your Brand Message

Your market research should tell you what it is that your audience values and needs most.

Knowing this, you can position your brand to appeal directly to them saying, “Hey. We get you. This is why you should work with us.”

Your brand message should include:

• Brand Values: What do you stand for?
• Your Unique Selling Point: What makes you better than your competitors?
• Tone: Is your audience looking for professionalism? Humor? Directness?
• Benefits: What benefits do your services provide?
• Calls-to-Action: What actions do you want people to take when they see your brand?

The Brand Messaging Formula

Many brands think that branding comes down to brand colors, a logo, and a catchy tagline. Unfortunately, they focus too much on what they want and not enough on what their audience is looking for.

If you are going to create a brand message or tagline, it should put your audience front and center.  For example:

 “We help [ audience ] in [area] [ achieve benefit ] through [ services ] that [features].”

This can be replicated for any brand and can even be applied to individual service pages throughout your website.

Build Strategic Partnerships

Local marketing can be especially difficult if your audience isn’t highly engaged online. How do you tap into that market?

By building strategic partnerships with local businesses.

If you are a boutique pet store, you could build partnerships with local animal shelters.  Provide discounts to those who adopt a rescue animal.  If you are a building material manufacturer, build partnerships with local contractors who could be incentivized to use your materials and send business your way. In return, offer discounts on building materials and refer customers to them for their projects.

Focus on Mutual Benefit

These kinds of relationships can work in person and online. The goal is to build relationships that are mutually beneficial and funnel leads for each other.

You can build these partnerships through outreach and content marketing, LinkedIn and email marketing. Just be sure to communicate the value that’s provided to each partner and that values align.

Share Targeted Content on Social Media

If your market research determines that your audience is active on social media, it’s time to create content that grabs their attention. Many brands worry too much about “hacking” the algorithm and sharing content across all social media platforms. You don’t have to do that.

You simply want to share content that makes your audience say, “Wow – that sounds like me!” and entices them to read more.

You want to focus on content that’s:

• Informative.
• Accurate.
• Relevant.
• Timely.
• Well-Written.
• Engaging.

Don’t focus on:

• Sharing your latest blog post without a caption.
• Stock images of people with a call-out to “Contact us for help today!”
• An update about what’s happened in your office this week.
• A trending video of a cat (even if it is hilarious).

Social media marketing is more about sharing value than it is about consistency or mastering the algorithm. Share what your audience wants to see to keep them coming back for more.

Attend Networking Events

Even online it can be easy to stay in our own little “bubble”. People value human connection, making networking and in-person marketing highly effective.

Not only will attending local networking events help you build strategic partnerships, but you may also brush shoulders with some big players in your industry. With an introduction and shared interests, they may turn into a potential client or partner.

Ad Campaigns

Whether it’s digital or traditional media, the only guaranteed coverage of your business, product, sale, etc. is to spend money.  Though the trend is moving more to Google and Facebook ads, your market research should tell you where to grab your target audience. That being said, if you don’t understand how to utilize different advertising platforms, enlist the help of experts to maximize your dollars and your reach.

What Does This All Mean?

Before focusing on marketing techniques, you need to gain a solid understanding of what the local market wants and where they are searching for the services that they want.

Without market research and a strong brand message, local brands will waste time and money focusing on the wrong demographic.

Need help with your brand messaging and target marketing?  Contact SK Consulting.  From concept. To creation. To Implementation.  We’re there for you every step of the way!

Don’t Settle for Mediocre Marketing

The word fluffy can be used to describe a wide variety of things – a puppy, a diet-cramping dessert, a new bath towel.  All of those are acceptable.  But, when your marketing efforts are referred to or proven to be ‘fluffy’, that’s not a good thing.  That means it is not measurable, not accountable and it is unclear how it impacts the business – it’s mediocre. 

As a business owner, you need to understand what your message is, what your products and/or services are, and how you want to effectively market them.  We can all learn a lesson from Unilever’s founder Lord Leverhulme who stated, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the problem is I do not know which half.”

Turn Fluffy into Functional and Fortuitous

Think of a chair. It may be a fairly beautiful chair; imagine its intricate carvings and a polish that reflects a flawless finish. But chairs aren’t for viewing.  They’re functional purpose is for sitting.

At the crucial moment of trust, we place a significant measure of personal pleasure or pain, joy or embarrassment in the functionality of a chair. No one desires to come crashing to the floor due to a mediocre chair construction process.

No one strives for mediocrity.

We all know that mediocrity is the result (at best) of minimal effort. Mediocrity simply accepts things as they are and does not push beyond normal desire to make anything better. Mediocrity, when accepted, is the acknowledgement that the goal isn’t truly worth pursuing and not valuable in the eyes of the pursuer. It is laziness in not finding new avenues to reach a desired goal…to think outside the proverbial box.

Does anyone value mediocrity? Is there any honor or prestige that accompanies that level of effort? Quite honestly, we all experience inherent shame in knowing that the effort could have been better and that it should have produced a more excellent result.

Commit to excellence instead.

In many ways, the concept of excellence is the foundation to all other guiding values in life. We may desire knowledge, wealth, or accomplishment; but, without a standard of excellence to measure our effort, we may be left with an empty hand or a half-finished journey. We are left with very little satisfaction from what we desire. Excellence frames for us a standard by which we measure everything we do. By setting a high standard of excellence, we convey a desire to do everything in the best way possible.

Most people will respond well to excellence. They will value the product of an excellent process, and they will trust the builder of the product if they see a commitment to an excellent method.

Now think of the well-made chair.

Imagine a chair made by an excellent craftsman, with hands skilled in the art of weight distribution and fingers controlled by a mind that is driven by excellence. The mind that is ever growing, ever improving, and seeking a better, more efficient way to build a better chair. The chair becomes more beautiful and sturdier, benefiting you and all who sit upon it.

Just like chairs, everything we build, or make, or do in this life should be done with a commitment to excellence.

Commit to excellence in both what you do and how you do it.

At SK Consulting, we don’t build chairs.  But, we do create effective and efficient marketing campaigns and materials – building trust within your target audience.  Don’t be mediocre in your marketing efforts.  Hire the experts who will help you not just reach your goals, but exceed them.

From concept to creation to implementation – SK Consulting is there with you every step of the way!